Did Microsoft Plant Nokia CEO Stephen Elop to Ensure it Could Acquire Nokia?

Call us conspiracy theorists, but the first thing that we thought of when we heard that Microsoft and Nokia had inked a deal for Microsoft to buy Nokia – and with it Stephen Elop, who left Microsoft three years ago to become the CEO of Nokia – was that this was an inside job. Are we the only ones who are suspicious?

Let’s look at the facts – Stephen Elop left Microsoft, where he was not only head of Microsoft’s business division, but a member of the senior leadership team at Microsoft, to become CEO of Nokia, where his job was, presumably, to turn the flagging company around. A mere three years later, well, Elop did turn Nokia around, but not in the way one might have expected of a new CEO – he turned it around and sold it back to his former employer.

Was this the plan all along?

Why is nobody else talking about this? It’s like the emperor’s new clothes.

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But wait, the plot thickens. Because just weeks before Microsoft announced the Nokia acquisition, current Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced plans to retire. And already the buzz is that, once back in the fold as an executive vice-president, Elop will be the obvious choice to step in as CEO of Microsoft.

{But what nobody seems to be saying is, “especially after having delivered Nokia to his former employer on a silver platter.”}

Three years is a very short time in terms of the massive tectonic shifts that have been evidenced, and how the plates (to stretch a metaphor) have lined up.

Our bet is that the Justice Department and the SEC both will be looking at this one closely – if in fact Elop went to Nokia with the end game of making them a more attractive acquisition target, that will merit some close inspection indeed.

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